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Alonso believes Ferrari has made a step forward

Fernando Alonso is ready for this weekend's race in Barcelona. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

Fernando Alonso believes that Ferrari has made progress with the revisions to its F2012, although it’s impossible to judge where the car stands relative to the opposition.

Alonso was fastest in FP1 but didn’t get a clean lap on new option tires in FP2, which explains why he was down to 14th place. Other drivers found a significant improvement on their first laps on the soft compound.

“We didn’t improve as much as other cars,” said the Spaniard. “Some others improved by between [one and one and a half seconds] with the soft. I was not able, but I had traffic on the first lap, then I slowed for the second, and then when I pushed on the third, I had traffic as well.

“I think I can improve a little bit for tomorrow with a clean lap and be a little bit closer to this advantage gain that everybody seems to find with the soft. In a way, we felt a little bit more comfortable with the hard tires today.”

Alonso is confident that the car is better: “Yesterday, we said that we are trying to recover some of the gap, and the first step is here in Barcelona. I’m confident that we did the job. The car or the updates that we introduced today, the first numbers are positive. We need to look more in detail, but everything looks as expected. But for sure, it’s not as some of the expectations that we read last week.”

However, he insisted that only in qualifying will the true picture become apparent.

“We have to wait for tomorrow, especially for qualifying--how much we struggle tomorrow. Our task is to go into Q3, and it has been quite tough for us in China, Bahrain and Malaysia, so tomorrow, hopefully, we can see some positive signs with this. Going into Q3 a little bit more relaxed will be a good sign. If we go to Q3 with a lot of problems or we don’t go into Q3 at all it will be more or less the same situation as before.

“Tomorrow will be a good answer on that. Today it’s too early to say, because we don’t know what the others are doing. On Fridays, it’s impossible to analyze.”